The showdown. Or, why I'm writing a blog.

Galileo Galilei: astronomer, philosopher, mathematician, physicist, inventor, heretic, father of modern science.

Anton Chekhov: playwrite, artist, physician, short story writer, pince-nez aficionado.

Nathan Weber: none of these things.

But I am an almost qualified scientist (PhD is due to be submitted July 2012) and I count writing as my favourite spare time activity. I love writing. Creating stories and characters, compressing a complex of feelings and objects into a line on a page, and embalming a new world in pen and paper.

Hard alongside the writing I have my science. I love science. Investigating and disentangling the observations and results, admiring the efficiency and complexity of systems that make up our world, and the logical progression of thought, theory and application.

You can see I have a dilemma, a dichotomy of wills. I wanted to be the writer all trench coat and stylishly unkempt hair, an encylopaedia of the written arts, and maybe even some pince-nez and a bowtie. I wanted to be the scientist all lab coat and hiking boots, publishing the solution to our environmental woes in Science and Nature (why settle for just one), and declining to give invited keynotes at international symposia just because I can. But really I never wanted to fully encapsulate either of those paths. There is too much wankery at the far ends of the scales. Too much self importance surrounding the industries and not enough time taken just accepting the enjoyment of reading or applying the science for real benfit outside of academic snobbery.

Which brings me to the title of my blog. Galileo was known as a scientist and Chekhov as a writer but they integrated both their creative and their scientific spirits in their lives. This blog is an attempt for me to do the same, to not only balance the competing halves but to synthesise them. To harness the creative in the logical and the methodical in the artistic. So I will be posting short stories, parts of my thesis, parts of larger stories, cool science that has interested me, random steam of conciousness writing that may get me committed to the mental health ward, and maybe (if I feel brave enough) some poetry (the biggest sissy of the creative writing world).

Please feel free to pull me up if you think I am writing shit or dropping into self-indulgent wankery (that goes for both halves of the blog). And don't feel you need to be polite about it (though that would be appreciated), but please make a convincing argument. I once spent four days arguing for the science of climate change with naysayers on Barnaby Joyce's homepage, everyone else got bored and I was posting to myself. I won't attack you but if I disagree I will politely make my case. You may convince me otherwise or we may argue for the life of the blog (or agree to disagree). As you will see I can be malleable or a stubborn bastard -- another dichotomy.